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Introduction
The Singapore Mathematics Project Festival (SMPF)
was inaugurated by the Singapore Mathematical Society in 2001 in
recognition of the fact that creative and innovative work in mathematics
may best be reflected in project work wherein ideas may be thoroughly
explored and carried through from start to finish. The Society
received a donation from Mr Foo Fook Lian to establish the Foo Kean Pew
Memorial Prizes awarded to projects adjudged to be the best in the
respective sections of the Festival.
Programme:
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Singapore Mathematics Project Festival
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Participants:
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All Secondary students
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Descriptions:
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The objective of this activity is
3-fold:
(i) to encourage secondary school students in Singapore to carry out and present
innovative and creative work in mathematics,
(ii) to recognise and emphasise the importance of project-based learning
in the secondary school curriculum, and
(iii) to complement the examination-based Mathematical Olympiads
organised by the Society.
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Dates & Venue:
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Preliminary Rounds: Feb 6 and 20, 2010 (Venues to be
arranged)
Final Round: March 20, 2010 at River
Valley High School
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Registration Fees:
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$50 per project for schools which are SMS
institutional members and
$60 per project for schools which are non-SMS institutional members.
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Enquiry:
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Mr Peng
Wei
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Deadlines:
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Online Registration: Jan 8, 2010
(see registration procedure)
Payment and Online Submission of Projects: Jan 15, 2010, (see submission
procedure)
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Rules of the Festival
1. The Singapore Mathematics
Project Festival (hereinafter called "the Festival") is
jointly organized by the Singapore Mathematical Society and the Department
of Mathematics, National University of Singapore. The Festival Congress
will be held during the one-week school holiday on March 20, 2010. The objectives of the Festival
are
a.
To encourage
secondary school students in Singapore to carry out and present innovative
and creative work in mathematics,
b.
To recognize and
emphasize the importance of project-based learning in the secondary school
curriculum,
c.
To complement the
examination-based Mathematical Olympiads organized by the Singapore
Mathematical Society.
2. The Festival aims to showcase mathematical
projects completed by secondary school students in the year preceding
submission. Projects may be carried out by teams of not more than four members from the same school. The deadline for submission is January 15, 2010. The language of the Festival will be English.
3. Projects submitted to the
Festival may be submitted to other interschool
competition organized by other organization. However, the projects
have to be done by the students within the calendar year of 2009, and may not be submitted to any competition held
before 2010.
4. The Festival will have two
sections : a Junior Section and a Senior Section.
a.
For the Junior Section, projects submitted must
be carried out by students who are in Secondary One or Two in
the Express Stream (including the Gifted Education Programme), or Secondary
One, Two or Three in the Normal Stream (Academic or
Technical) in the year in which the project is carried out (i.e., the year
preceding submission).
b.
For the Senior Section , projects submitted must
be carried out by students who are in secondary schools in the year in
which the project is carried out.
5. Any project (on any topic) that
is relevant and/or related to mathematics may be submitted to the Festival.
Projects submitted to the Festival need not involve advanced mathematical
ideas or concepts, and problems investigated need not be solved completely
or conclusively. Projects submitted will be judged based on the following Criteria
of Assessment:
a.
Mathematical
content
b.
Creativity and
originality
c.
Applicability and
relevance
d.
Overall
presentation
For the purpose of judging creativity and originality,
submission of journals on the project is strongly encouraged.
6. Authors of all
projects will be asked to give a 15
minutes oral presentation plus 5 minutes Q&A session in the preliminary
round. The preliminary round will be held on Feb 6, 2010 and Feb 20, 2010. The presentation and the written
reports will be assessed by a panel of judges made up of teachers and
mathematicians.
7. Based on the scores on oral
presentation and written projects, we will invite teams with potential of
getting at least a silver medal to be interviewed and give an oral
presentation at the Festival congress on March 20, 2010.
8. Another panel of judges will
assess all shortlisted projects based on the material submitted, the
interview and the oral presentation. They will be made up of mathematicians
from the Department of Mathematics, National University of Singapore,
Mathematics and Mathematics Education Group, National Institute of
Education, and school teachers. Each member of the panel of judges should
not be involved in any way in the supervision of any project submitted to
the Festival. Decisions made by the panel of judges shall be final.
9. Each school is invited to submit not more than five projects to each section of the Festival. There is a
registration fee of $50 per project for schools which are SMS
institutional members and $60 per project for schools which are non-SMS
institutional members. Schools intending to submit projects undertaken by their students
are required to register each project online (link to be provided at a
later date) between Dec 28, 2009 and Jan 8, 2010. Payment of the
registration fee, together with online submission of the projects must be
completed by Jan 15, 2010. Projects submitted by Jan 15, 2010 but whose
registration fee has not been received by Jan 15, 2010 will be disqualified. Late
registrations, payments, submissions will not be accepted.
10. We need a lot of manpower to
assess projects in the preliminary round and we seek the cooperation of
schools that submit a project to nominate a teacher to sit in the panel of
judges in preliminary round. The nominated teacher's particulars and
contact information must be
provided during the project registration period (Dec 28, 2009 to Jan 8,
2010). Nominated teacher judges will be informed of their judging duties by
Jan 18, 2010.
11. At the end of the Festival,
prizes and awards will be given out as follows:
a.
For the Junior Section, the project judged to be the
overall best project (with Gold award) by the panel of judges will be
awarded the Foo Kean Pew Memorial Prize (Junior Section) (a cash
prize of $1,000). The school that submits the overall best project in the
Junior Section will be awarded the Singapore Mathematical Society Shield
(Junior Section), which will be kept by the school until the next festival.
A Shield may be kept permanently by a school that has submitted the overall
best project for five consecutive festivals.
b.
For the Senior Section, the project judged to be
the overall best project (with Gold award) by the panel of judges will be
awarded the Foo Kean Pew Memorial Prize (Senior Section) (a cash
prize of $1,000). The school that submits the overall best project in the
Senior Section will be awarded the Singapore Mathematical Society Shield
(Senior Section), which will be kept by the school until the next
festival. A Shield may be kept permanently by a school that has submitted
the overall best project for five consecutive festivals.
c.
For each section, projects of sufficient merit will be
awarded Gold/ Silver/Bronze prizes and honorable mention, limited to at
most three Gold, five Silver and five Bronze prizes. Each
Gold/Silver/Bronze award project will receive a cash prize of
$400/$200/$100 respectively. In addition, for each of the criteria
of assessment listed under Rule 5, the project which scores the highest for
that criterion and of sufficient merit may be awarded a special cash prize
of $200. Certificates of participation will be awarded to all participants.
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Judging Criteria
1. Mathematical
Content
Mathematical content is interpreted in a broad sense to include all areas
that are relevant and/or related to mathematical sciences. A high level of
technical mathematical prowess is not expected. Rather, the project should
present a clear and coherent understanding of the chosen topic. Most
importantly, any mathematics included in the project should be correct.
2. Creativity and
Originality
Creativity and originality may be exhibited in the choice of topic, the
methods used to analyze the chosen problem and the way in which findings
are presented. The emphasis is on project participants showing thinking
skills beyond "standard" approaches to the topic at hand.
3. Applicability and
Relevance
Projects that model and discuss situations and problems based on real-life
scenarios are highly encouraged. Projects that find use in situations
beyond the main topic discussed are also deemed applicable.
4. Overall
Presentation
The basic requirement included under this criterion is a clear and
well-organized exposition of the project. Additional material such as
models and computer programs may enhance the presentation if they are
relevant to the topic and well constructed. For teams invited to the
Festival Congress, their presentation at the Congress will also be taken
into account.
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Judging
Process
1.
Preliminary rounds
Every submitted project will have to go through a preliminary round of
presentation and Q&A. The judging panel for the preliminary round
consists of 3 to 4 school teachers and is chaired by a
mathematician from NUS or NIE. The panel of judges can ask one or two
questions after each presentation, which should not last more than 5 minutes.
The panel will give a grade A (excellent), B (good), C (average) and D (poor)
to each project based on the four judging criteria.
These grades will be used as a reference for shortlisting projects for the
final round as well as awarding the various colour medals. (The final grading
of the projects may be different from the preliminary round grading after the
written reports have been assessed.)
2. Award
of medals and shortlisting final round projects
The six chair-person (mathematicians) of the preliminary round judges will
form two panels (one for each of the junior and senior sections) to assess
the written reports of the submitted projects. Based on the written reports
and the grades of the preliminary round, the panel will shortlist the
projects for final round presentation and decide on the awards for the other
projects.
3. Final
round presentation
The panel of judges (item 2 above) will assess the final presentation as well
as interview the teams. Based on the oral presentation and the written
reports, the panel will decide on the best project as well as the awards for
the other final round projects.
Online Registration and Submission Procedure
1.
All submissions will be done online at
the SMPF 2010 submission website.
2.
All projects submitted should be in the form of one written report
not exceeding thirty A4-sized pages. The written
report should be essentially self-contained and state clearly the objective
and conclusion of the project.
3.
Each submission must include a summary of
about two pages in a separate document.
4.
In addition to the summary and written report, each submission
may be supplemented by computer software, models, video clips, and/or
journal/log books/scrap books. Supplementary materials may be submitted
online at the above website together with the written report and summary.
5.
The website for submission will accept documents in the
following format with the stated file size limit:
o
Text files (.pdf, .doc file, not exceeding
10MB in total)
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Video files (.avi, .asf, .mpg, .wmv file, not
exceeding 100MB and not longer than 5 minutes in total)
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Audio files (.mp3, .a3w, .asf, .wma file, not
exceeding 10MB in total)
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Image files (.jpeg, .bmp, .gif file, not
exceeding 10MB in total)
Any participant intending to submit
documents in any other format or exceed the stated file size must contact Mr Peng Wei (pengwei@nus.edu.sg) prior to
submission.
- All
participants intending to submit a project for the festival must first
visit the SMPF 2010 registration website to register their project. Registration must be
completed before January 8, 2010, 5:00pm. Based on the
information provided by participants during registration, each project
registered will be given
·
a Project ID
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a web-generated project registration form
·
a password
7.
Each project registered must be accompanied by the name of the
teacher nominated to sit in the panel of judges in the preliminary round.
8.
Payment for each registered project must be made before Jan 15, 2010, 5:00pm (see section on Registration Fees and Payment).
9.
With
the Project ID and password obtained during registration, participants will
be able to login at the SMPF 2010 submission website to submit their projects
from Jan 11, 2010 until Jan 15, 2010, 11:59pm. However, note that projects submitted without completing the
payment of registration fees by the deadline stated in point 8 will be
disqualified.
10.
Late submissions and/or payments will not be
accepted.
Registration Fees
and Payment
1.
Each school is invited to submit not more than
five projects to each section of the Festival. There is a registration
fee of $50 per project for schools which are SMS
institutional members and $60 per project for
schools which are non-SMS institutional members.
2.
The web-generated project registration form
obtained during project registration (see point 6 on Online
Registration and Submission Procedure) must accompany each payment.
- Registration
fees may be paid by cash or cheque. Payment must be
made before Jan 15, 2010, 5:00pm. No extension
is allowed.
- Cash or cheque payment must be made personally to the authorised person at
the address below. Please call beforehand to
make an appointment to ensure that the cash is received by him.
Mr Peng Wei
c/o Department of Mathematics
National University of Singapore
S14, #01-07
2, Science Drive 2
Singapore 117543 (DID: 65166249)
5.
Schools may combine the registration fee for
multiple projects into one payment.
6.
Schools may send in their cheques by post to the
above address but the Singapore Mathematical Society is not responsible for
any lost cheques, which would be deemed as failure to complete payment by the
deadline.
7.
For cheque payment, address the payee as
“Singapore Mathematical Society”.
8.
Receipts will be issued once payment is received in good order.
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